Tangled in Time 2: The Burning Queen

Book Two

The Burning Queen

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Other Books by Kathryn Lasky Tangled in Time: The Portal (Book 1) Guardians of Ga’Hoole Wolves of the Beyond Horses of the Dawn Bears of the Ice Daughters of the Sea The Royal Diaries: Elizabeth I The Royal Diaries: Mary, Queen of Scots The Deadlies

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Kathryn Lasky

Book Two

The Burning Queen

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Tangled in Time Book 2: The Burning Queen Text copyright © 2019 by Kathryn Lasky Interior art © 2019 by Fran Forman All rights reserved. Printed in Germany.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007. www.harpercollinschildrens.com ISBN 978-0-06-269328-0 19 20 21 22 23

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Typography by CPIG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 v First Edition

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For Luella Grace Knight, a passionate reader

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Contents

Torn Chapter 1: Fingers Crossed...............................................................................1 Chapter 2: Fish Sticks and Other Lunchroom Atrocities.................8 Chapter 3: Know Thine Enemy................................................................17 Chapter 4: A Creak on the Staircase.........................................................25 Chapter 5: The Virtual Rose......................................................................34 Chapter 6: Stuck Up! .....................................................................................44 Chapter 7: Eternally Youthful.................................................................... 51 Chapter 8: A Bitter Wind...........................................................................59 Chapter 9: Born to Bully............................................................................... 65 Chapter 10: A Shadow World.................................................................... 75 Chapter 11: Happy Snow Day! ................................................................80 Chapter 12: The Art of Smugness.............................................................90

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Ominous Signs Chapter 13: A Proper Head for a Proper Crown............................. 103 Chapter 14: The Blessing of a Blizzard..............................................113 Chapter 15: The Longest Night...............................................................124 Chapter 16: They Burn Witches Here, Don’t They? .................. 130 Chapter 17: Without Darkness There Is No Light.......................141 Chapter 18: The Snow Fairy’s Bat Mitzvah..................................153 Chapter 19: The Gift....................................................................................162 Chapter 20: A Message...............................................................................168 Chapter 21: The Kindling.........................................................................175 Chapter 22: Migrant in Time.................................................................184

The Burning Queen Chapter 23: Pugs and Pixies................................................................... 199 Chapter 24: The Dress................................................................................209 Chapter 25: The Hush Book.................................................................... 218 Chapter 26: The Wedding......................................................................... 232 Chapter 27: Living in Two Worlds...................................................... 240 Chapter 28: The ICE Men........................................................................249

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Chapter 29: The Scent of Smoke.............................................................. 261 Chapter 30: Phantom Baby...................................................................... 269 Chapter 31: Fire and Ice..............................................................................274 Chapter 32: “Someone over There Misses You” .............................287 Chapter 33: Welcome to America........................................................... 295 Chapter 34: Another Mary, Another Queen ....................................300 Epilogue:...............................................................................................................312

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Book Two

The Burning Queen

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TRIBUNE Bow Ties Not Just for Guys?

by Betsy Langford

Fashion blogger and Lincoln Middle School student Rose Ashley and a group of her friends have started a new trend—bow ties.

“Bow ties are gender free,” says Rose. “They add a lot to an outfit and can help express your personality.” Before moving to Indianapolis, when she was a fifth grader in Philadelphia, Rose started a bow tie of the month club. “Bow ties are really easy to make. So I just posted the directions on my blog and picked out an easy-to-find fabric, and kids would copy them.” Now, however, she and her team of “Christmas Elves,” as she calls them, are making and selling the bow ties. All proceeds go to the Indy Christmas Fund for Needy Children. So far they have raised almost $1,000. Members of her team are fellow Lincoln Middle School students Susan Gold, Sibby Huang, Anand Preet, Myles Randolph, Kevin

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Ellsworth, Joe Mallory, and Sayid Nassim.

“We use all kinds of fabric and styles,” Susan Gold explains.

“There are many kinds of styles,” Rose interjects. “My personal favorite is the James Bond style. Nobody wore it better than Sean Connery in Goldfinger.” What about Skyfall with Daniel Craig? this reporter asked. “Okay, but he doesn’t have the chops to really carry it off. Sorry, Daniel.”

Susan Gold is sporting a bright green tie that suddenly flashes red. “LED light. I sewed it in.”

She giggles. “I don’t think Rose approves. She’s somewhat of a purist.”

“Not really,” Rose protests. “Bow ties have evolved like everything else.”

It turns out that Rose Ashley is a bit of a fashion historian. “You know, the first bow ties date back to the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. Croatian mercenaries would use scarves to hold together the openings of their shirts at the neck.”

Well, hats off and bow ties on to these Indianapolis middle graders for their energy and generosity in helping to make a better Christmas for many children in need.

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Torn

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Chapter 1

Fingers Crossed

“N

ever . . . never . . . never!” Rose muttered in her head. Her fingers were crossed and still jammed in her pockets, but the pockets were different—not the deep ones of her kirtle but tight shallow jeans pockets. The floor was hard beneath her knees—not wood, but stone or cement.

And the scent. Fresher. And yet she still had her eyes clamped shut. She was almost afraid to open them. The last thing she had been aware of was a slight smell. Yes, Queen Mary, who now wanted to enslave her, did have a little body odor problem. Why didn’t they have real deodorant in the sixteenth century, instead of those stupid little cloth bags filled with dried flower petals?

But the scent that swirled about Rose now was not of

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dried flowers but fresh, just-blossoming flowers. A sweet, alluring fragrance suffused the air. Slowly Rose opened her eyes. She looked up. A fifteen-foot vine with beautiful pink blooms fell through the darkness. The vines could have been fireworks mutely exploding in the night. But they weren’t.

They were hibiscus, and they were cascading from the central cupola of the greenhouse. She was back! Back in her grandmother Rosalinda’s greenhouse. Back in Indianapolis, Indiana. Back in what she now called her home century.

But was she safe? She uncrossed her fingers. She looked around. The words of the nasty queen, Mary Tudor, still rang in her ears. Rose Ashley, we hear you are excellent in the wardrobe, have a way with a needle, and can do fine and delicate work. You shall from here on be our mistress of the wardrobe. . . . You shall serve me, queen of this realm, and swear loyalty to me above all others save God. Do you swear? Down on your knees and swear. That was when Rose had crossed her fingers and lied to this new queen.

Rose had previously served Princess Elizabeth, who, although very demanding and imperious, was not the nasty piece of work that Queen Mary was. However, when their half brother, King Edward—barely fifteen—had died, Mary had ascended the throne, to everyone’s horror.

That was the bad news. Not just for Rose, who would have to serve this vile piece of royal nastiness. But also bad news for Princess Elizabeth. Mary liked to take things that belonged to Elizabeth. She was insanely jealous of her

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half sister—of her youth, for one thing, since Queen Mary was seventeen years older. But she was also envious of Elizabeth’s beauty and her smarts. Elizabeth was the smartest kid Rose had ever met. She was insanely smart—spoke French, Italian, Latin—yes, she actually spoke Latin! If she had lived in the twenty-first century and been in Rose’s school, she could have been a mathlete and gone to the state championship.

Elizabeth was already doing trigonometry when she was just eleven years old. In Rose’s home century, you didn’t do that until high school. When Rose had once asked Elizabeth if she knew calculus, the princess’s face turned blank. And when she asked Rose to explain what calculus was, Rose’s mind turned blank. She almost blurted out, “How should I know? That’s not until high school.” But she stopped herself in the nick of time. As soon as she got back to her home century, she googled calculus and found out it hadn’t been discovered until the seventeenth century! By Isaac Newton, no less.

Well, no matter how you looked at it, Queen Mary was definitely bad news. This was in fact a typical bad news/ good news situation. The good news—Rose was back. The bad news was that her father, Nicholas Oliver, was not with her, nor was her sixteenth-century best friend, Franny.

Then, just as she was reflecting on all this, she felt something brush against her leg. Good news! September! She

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gasped and reached for the bright orange cat. Picking her up, she pressed her to her chest. The cat wiggled and began head-butting Rose. Head-butting was the supreme expression of affection for cats. Sometimes September did not return with Rose to their home century but lingered in the sixteenth instead. Better mousing back then, due to lousy housekeeping habits. All the palaces had stables chock-full of mice and other less charming rodents.

As she walked upstairs to her bedroom, Rose felt the sudden vibration of her cell phone in the other pocket of her jeans. She took it out and looked at it. The time was 8:45 p.m. and it was Susan calling, of course. Susan Gold was Rose’s best friend in her home century.

“Hey, Rose, what’s up?” Susan said cheerfully.

Rose was always a bit disoriented when she first returned to the present day. “Uh . . .” She couldn’t answer immediately.

“Whatcha been up to?”

“Uh . . . French homework.” A sort-of lie. She had been doing it before she’d left. But the fact was, none of her friends knew about this. This . . . was there any other word for it? Rose had a definitely weird skill, this ability of hers.

She could travel through time. Was it a skill or her fate?

Rose often wondered.

“I thought you’d be sewing with all those new bow tie orders. Not to mention the costumes for the Snow Show.”

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Rose glanced over at the costumes piled on a futon in the corner of her bedroom. They were awaiting their final touches, which meant glitter and glitz. Skaters loved the glitz—sequins, feathers, whatever. The costumes were designed to dazzle AND accentuate the skater’s motion. A jump was all the more beautiful with a fringe of glittery spangles sewn to the hem of a skating skirt. Fake feathers attached to sleeves suggested flight. Seams were often accentuated with rhinestones. To study up on all this, the Indianapolis Skating Club had given her tickets for her and two friends (Joe and Susan) to see the Disney on Ice show.

They even got to go backstage and look at the costumes.

The wardrobe mistress gave a few old ones to Rose so she could study them. Apparently a single costume only lasted for a couple of weeks during show season.

“The costumes are almost done,” Rose said. “Just have to sew on some fringe and stuff. Then I’ll get to work on this last order of bow ties.” She yawned.

“You sound tired, Rose.”

“Hmmm . . .” She was about to say that you would be too if you’d traveled back five centuries and watched a prince die and a complete rat get the crown, and then were made to get down on your knees and swear to serve that rat queen. Not to mention—Dad! I miss my dad. Tears started to run down her face. She couldn’t cry on the phone with Susan. There was no way she could explain it all to her.

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“Listen, I have to go. This French is hard. I don’t really get the difference between the passé composé and passé antérieur.” Rose sighed.

“Oh, one is really for speaking, like ‘We went to the Louvre.’ Nous sommes allées au Louvre. The other is nous eûmes au Louvre, and that’s just for literary use, you know, in books.

The first one is kind of regular time. The second is when you’re in a literary time zone.”

“Oh,” Rose said. That was, of course, her problem. She seemed to slip between time, between tenses and time zones. There wasn’t exactly “regular time” for Rose.

“Get it?” Susan asked.

“Sort of,” Rose replied.

“The Mean Queens have been back for two weeks now.

It seems like forever, doesn’t it?” Susan said. Rose caught her breath. Susan wasn’t talking about Mary Tudor, Queen of England. She was talking about Carrie, Brianna, and Lisa—also known as the Trio of Doom. The Nemeses on the Premises. They had all three been suspended from school for two days after playing a terrible trick on Joe, Susan’s sort-of boyfriend. They basically sabotaged his skates, so that he fell and broke his ankle. Meaning he was out of the Snow Show. But Brianna was out too—not only out of school for two days, but also banished from the Indianapolis Skating Club for good. Served her right. Sometimes Rose

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felt as if she were caught not just between two centuries, but between two sets of Mean Queens as well.

Well, Princess Elizabeth was not a queen, of course, but she could be mean too. Not as mean as Mary, but kind of spiteful. Like the time she took Rose’s locket. The locket that her father had made. The rose-shaped locket that had the photo of her and her mom in it . . . and that of her dad, Nicholas Oliver, the goldsmith to the court! It was downright mean that Elizabeth had snatched that locket from her, with the lame excuse that only royals could wear the Tudor Rose. Rose crossed her fingers again and sent up a little prayer.

Oh please, don’t let Princess Elizabeth figure out the secret to opening that locket!

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Chapter 2

Fish Sticks and Other Lunchroom Atrocities

“G

ood morning, students!” It was the voice of Ms. Fuentes, the principal of Lincoln Middle School. “’Tis the season to be merry, but also grateful. And we are grateful to the Bow Tie Team—Susan Gold, Rose Ashley, Joe Mallory, Anand Preet, Sibby Huang, Kevin Ellsworth, Sayid Nassim, and Myles Randolph—for their extraordinary efforts in raising money for Indianapolis’s most needy children.

They have all been awarded certificates of community service from the Indianapolis Tribune. They will be presented today at morning assembly.”

“Myles.” Carrie’s snarky voice slithered through the air.

“Your hands can barely move. How can you sew? All you can do is push the button for your wheelchair with one finger.”

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Rose turned around in her desk. “Myles happens to be our chief financial officer, Carrie. He does all the math and bookkeeping for this project.”

“Please! No talking, young ladies,” ordered Mr. Ross, the homeroom and language arts teacher. Rose felt her skin prickle. She hated it when Mr. Ross called them “young ladies.” Did he think he was making them feel grown up?

He wasn’t. Rose had always felt that there was something belittling about addressing middle school girls as “young ladies.” There was certainly nothing ladylike in Carrie’s remarks. It was pure bully.

Myles shot her a glance from his wheelchair. Even though he could only move one hand because of his cerebral palsy, his eyes said it all. “Let it go, Rose.”

The irony of Mr. Ross calling them “young ladies” hit her squarely as she looked at the words of the week on the greenboard. In five minutes Mr. Ross would erase the words on the board and then they would begin their spelling review. The students would be required to write out each word after Mr. Ross said it, then write it in a sentence. The words for this week were: chimera, egotistical, superior, condescend, betray, maniacal, belligerent, lackadaisical, and . . . ta-da! PATRONIZING. That was exactly the definition of calling a seventh-grade girl “young lady.”

Quiet descended on the homeroom as Mr. Ross said the words and the students wrote them down. Mr. Ross was

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very pale with red-rimmed eyes, and he kept a huge box of tissues on his desk. It seemed to Rose as if he were always on the brink of a sneeze. He appeared hyperallergic to something. After the class had written down all the words, they spent the next twenty minutes writing sentences. You got double points if you could use more than a single word within one sentence. Rose felt her brain rev up as she began to write the last sentence.

To address seventh-grade girls as “young ladies” is not simply condescending but in truth patronizing, and although it might suggest apparent kindness, it actually betrays the sense of superiority of the speaker.

There! thought Rose. She ground in her pencil tip for the period at the end of her triple-whammy sentence.

When they finished the spelling review, Mr. Ross collected the papers.

“Now please take out To Kill a Mockingbird and we’ll discuss the first chapter.”

He turned his back and used his laptop to project a sentence from the book on the screen.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop. . . . Somehow, it was hotter then . . . bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.

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“This, ladies and gents, is PERSONIFICATION!” He shouted the word as if he had invented it. Jeez, thought Rose, what a way to ruin a wonderful book. Rose must have made a face, for she’d caught Mr. Ross’s eye.

“Do you have something to say, Rose?”

“No, no . . . just a random thought.”

“Oh, please share it.”

“No, I’d rather not.” Mr. Ross does not like me.

Susan’s hand shot up. “I think it’s interesting to note that Harper Lee spent more time in New York City that she did in Monroeville, Alabama. Because she became so famous, she liked the anonymity of a big city.”

“Well, yes, Susan, that is interesting, but I was going to ask if any of you understood what I mean by personification?”

“Uh . . . ,” Susan said. “I think it’s describing something in a human way that is not human—like the town of Maycomb.”

“She wanted to get out of Maycomb and go to New York ’cause it was just too boring,” Tom, the boy who sat behind Susan, offered. “I know about small, boring towns. I lived in Kokomo until last year—really boring. Indianapolis is like New York compared to Kokomo.”

“Whhhaaaat?! Are you kidding?” said Joe. A boisterous argument broke out. Mr. Ross flushed, the

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way he always did when he lost control of his class. Someone made a fart noise in the back of the room. Or maybe it was a real fart.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies . . . .”

Oh, just shut up! thought Rose. But she saw the look of near panic in Mr. Ross’s eyes and almost felt sorry for him.

Almost but not quite. . . .

Rose was sitting at lunch at her usual table with Susan and Joe, Anand, Kevin, and Myles.

Rose cast a glance over at Joe’s plate.

“Barfaroni,” Joe said. “But better than fish sticks in a taco with cheese on top . . . I just couldn’t.” He paused and looked at Marisol, a new girl who was making her way toward their table. But then, within another second, she tripped. Her tray went flying. Her own barfaroni splattered on a sixth grader’s sweater. The sixth grader, Jenny, began wailing and jumped up from her chair.

“My grandma gave me this sweater. It’s cashmere.

You . . . you . . . clumsy girl. You’ve ruined my heirloom sweater!”

“Heirloom,” Susan muttered. “Give me a break.”

“Stupido!” Jenny shouted.

Marisol turned pale. Her eyes darted around the room like a trapped animal looking for escape.

“I can’t believe she just said that!” Rose gasped.

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“Look at them! Look at the Trio of Doom.” Joe leaned over and whispered to Rose. “They’re trying not to laugh.”

“Duet of Doom. No Brianna,” Rose said.

Indeed, Carrie’s and Lisa’s mouths were locked between smirks and howls of merriment. Meanwhile Jenny was giving an Academy Award–winning performance of outrage.

“Do you know how much this cost? This sweater?”

Anand, who was sitting next to Joe, jumped up to help Marisol salvage what she could from her lunch. She had arrived only a few weeks ago. Rose scooted over and made room for Marisol. “Don’t listen to them, Marisol. They’re just a bunch of jerks.”

“Hey! Look over there—seismic shift,” Kevin said suddenly.

“What are you talking about?” Rose asked.

“Okay, don’t be obvious, but look who’s sitting in the corner—alone.”

They all slid their eyes around to steal a glance.

“Brianna alone?” Joe said. “Impossible.”

“Then it is a duet,” Myles said. It was difficult for him to turn around in his wheelchair.

“Who will replace her?” Anand asked.

“Someone, I’m sure,” Rose said. “Power vacuum.”

“Power?” Marisol whispered. She appeared frightened.

Very frightened.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s just an expression,” Rose said.

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“A law of physics, actually,” Anand said. “Any space in which the pressure is lower than the atmospheric pressure.

I’ll demonstrate.” He began sucking on his straw. The liquid rose in the straw. “See?” he said, looking up at Marisol. “I reduced the pressure by sucking and the milk flowed up.

Same thing over there.” He tipped his head toward Carrie and Lisa, who were sitting at a table with a couple of sixth graders. “One of those kids will fill in for Brianna.”

“I’d put my money on the cashmere sweater heiress, Jenny,” Rose replied in a scalding voice.

Jenny was quite tiny, more the size of a fourth grader than a sixth grader, and right now she was looking up at Carrie with adoring eyes. Was she seeking approval? Jenny’s once almost white-blond hair now shimmered pink and had a spritz of glitter as well.

“What’s with the pink hair?” Joe asked.

“Well, look at Carrie with her blue streak. Obviously, she is worshipping at the altar of the Mean Queens—the glitter like Lisa, and the pink hair. What more do you need to know?”

“Looks like a wad of bubble gum,” Rose muttered.

Jenny had a tiny turned-up nose and she very much reminded Rose of Tinker Bell since she wore her hair in a little knot on top of her head. Her bangs fell in a slant across her forehead. It was the exact same hairstyle as Tinker Bell had in the Disney movie. Perky! Rose thought. Perky

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with a capital P! There was a rumor that Jenny’s mom was grooming her for the tryouts for the next season of America’s Next Top Tween Model.

“Hey, Rose,” Myles said. “Look over there; Mr. Ross is trying to get your attention.”

Rose looked up and saw Mr. Ross waving at her.

Uh . . . oh . . . , thought Rose, and got up from her seat and walked over to him.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch, Rose.”

“No, it’s okay. I was done.” Lie. “Well, I’d rather discuss this in homeroom.”

“Fine.”

When they got to the homeroom, Mr. Ross pulled out the spelling papers. “I want to apologize.”

“For what?” she asked, and dipped her head. She could not face those watery translucent eyes that looked as if they were on the edge of tears. She heard him sniffle.

“For this.” He slid a paper toward her.

Her own handwriting glared back at her. To address seventh-grade girls as “young ladies” is not simply condescending, but in truth patronizing, and although it might suggest apparent kindness, it actually betrays the sense of superiority of the speaker.

“There is so much truth to what you say. As Harper Lee says in To Kill A Mockingbird, ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of

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view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’” He gave a little chuckle, and this was followed by a gigantic sneeze. “Sorry about that. I’m allergic to a lot of stuff, especially this season—holly, certain kinds of Christmas trees . . .”

“Cats?”

“Yes, some cats. But the point is, Rose, that I never considered how the term might sound condescending, and patronizing. . . . I failed to climb into a seventh grader’s skin and walk around in it.”

“It’s okay,” Rose muttered, and then paused.

“It’s not okay,” he said. Rose wanted to try to tell him that it would be impossible for him to climb into her skin and walk around . . . walk between two centuries. “Well, I’m sorry.” He picked up a red pencil and marked the paper A++.

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Chapter 3

Know Thine Enemy

“D

o you ever wonder about Marisol?” Rose asked Susan as they picked over some shoes in their favorite vintage store, Old Souls.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, she just showed up a few weeks ago, kind of mysteriously. And she seems . . . I don’t know, kind of scared of something.”

“I think she’s pretty smart, because her English has really improved fast,” Susan said. “She’s in that English as a second language program, isn’t she?”

“I think so,” Rose replied.

“But I don’t know why you think she’s scared of something. I just think she looks tired a lot,” Susan said.

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“You do?”

“Yeah, in math—and she’s pretty good in math—I guess that’s why she’s in our class. Math being a kind of universal language.” Susan picked up a strange-looking coat.

“What the heck is this?”

“Ahh . . .” A voice tinkled from the other side of the rack. A little lady with a tumble of curls piled atop her head toddled out. “I wondered how long it would take you to discover that. It’s a pelisse. Quite the fashion about two hundred years ago. Once fur trimmed. The embroidery work is gorgeous. I’ll sell it to you cheap, because moths have feasted on most of it.”

“But not the sleeves,” Rose said.

“But what are you going to do with just sleeves?” Susan asked.

“Turn them into pants—cropped pants. Look, it’s velvet and the embroidery is beautiful.”

“Oh yes, in the mid-1800s there was quite a passion for floral embroidery on coats and jackets,” said the little lady, Elsie, the proprietor of the store.

The flowers reminded Rose of the long dangling vines of pink blossoms that hung in the greenhouse. Their scent had greeted her return from sixteenth-century England and Greenwich Palace. Rose wondered if her father was at Greenwich now. Or was he back in Stoke-on-the-Wold, sitting at his bench, forging and hammering gold into

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beautiful pieces for this new queen. For he was a goldsmith to the court, an important position, especially now.

Rose bit her lip lightly, as she often did when thinking. It was all so unfair. Her father was there. She was here.

Should she even risk going back, back to serve that horrible queen? But wouldn’t it be worth it if she could meet up with her dad and somehow, some way, get him to her century? Her home century. She knew it wasn’t his, but he would adjust.

“Would you take fifteen dollars for this, Elsie?”

Elsie looked at Rose. Her blue eyes that normally radiated cheer suddenly seemed to dim. It was as if an eclipse were occurring. A cloud cover of pity?

“Oh, that would be too much. You can have it for ten,” she replied gaily. Although to Rose it sounded a bit forced.

Do I have “orphan” written all over me? Rose wondered.

As they left the store, Rose could almost feel Elsie’s eyes on her back. She’s wondering about me. But there’s no way she would know. Rose pushed the feeling from herself and instead began to think about Marisol. Why did this girl, with her liquid brown eyes, intrigue her? She seemed very fragile yet strong. Strong in ways that Rose couldn’t quite imagine.

But it was the questions not about Marisol but her own predicament that continued to haunt Rose. Would it be too risky to go back?

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An hour later Rose was in the greenhouse with her grandmother. They often ate their dinner at one end of the seedling table.

“You’re fiddling with your food, child,” her grandmother said. “Something bothering you?”

“Uh . . . no, not really . . .” Her gran knew about her travels through time. Rosalinda Ashley was in fact a traveler herself. As Rose’s mother had been. “We have the gene,” her grandmother had said. But those times when her gran had traversed centuries were not as dangerous as the time that Rose would be facing if she returned. Mary Tudor would be known as Bloody Mary within a few years, for her determination to burn heretics—Protestants and others who would not follow the Catholic Church—at the stake. How many would she kill?

“Know thine enemy,” Gran muttered.

Rose stiffened. It was as if her gran were reading her mind. Creepy! “What?” Rose exclaimed. Her grandmother was bending over a tray of seedlings she had just started a week before. “Mite blight. Get the spray gun.”

Rose brought it over, and Rosalinda began squirting the seedlings. Her jaw was set and her eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses of her glasses. “The little devils. This is it! I shall eradicate them!” her grandmother croaked as she squeezed the trigger on the spray bottle.

Gran certainly knew her enemy, but did Rose know

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hers—Queen Mary? When the seedlings’ enemy was vanquished, her grandmother gave a big yawn and dropped her head to her chest. She would be asleep in another minute.

Betty, her gran’s caretaker, came into the greenhouse.

“Asleep?” she whispered.

“Not yet!” Rosalinda snapped. “Why would I be asleep in the thick of battle?”

“I think the battle’s over, Gran. You got every one of those mites.”

“How would you know?” Her gran looked up at her blankly. There were often these moments when her grandmother simply did not recognize her own granddaughter.

They were brief but rather unnerving for Rose. She didn’t resent these lapses, but they just made her feel so utterly alone.

Rose, after all, was a sort-of orphan. Her mother had been killed in a fiery car crash. So Rose had come to live with her gran just a few months before. Her grandmother, Rosalinda Ashley, had been her only living relative until she discovered her father in that other century. She had never suspected she even had a father—though of course she knew that somewhere there was one—but then she had discovered the beautiful rose pendant with its secret pin. It was Franny, her friend from that distant century, who had found the pendant first. She discovered the pin in the locket, and in opening it saw the pictures. The images

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seemed very strange to Franny, for she had never seen a photograph, of course. Photography would not be invented for another several centuries. It was a photo of Rose’s mom and Rose, looking very twenty-first-century in their bathing suits, posing on a beach in Florida. In the photo, Rose was about five years old and wearing her Little Mermaid bathing suit and her swim goggles hanging from her neck with cartoon frog eyes on top. She clutched a Mickey Mouse pocketbook. At that age she seldom went far without her Disney gear. In the other half of the locket was a picture of a man. Not a modern-day man, but definitely one from the sixteenth century, with a trim beard and a high ruff, the fashion of the time.

That man, Rose learned, was in fact her father—Nicholas Oliver, goldsmith for the royal court. He had made that locket. Rose had only met him twice in the sixteenth century. But now she was determined to bring him back into her century, her home century, the twenty-first. She’d bring Franny back too if that were possible. Franny, a scullery girl in Hatfield House, was her best friend in that century. Susan was her best in this one. But she doubted that Franny would leave, as she had a family there. Rose had discovered that Franny and her mom and dad were also time travelers. But the distance they had come was not so far in time, just close to a hundred and fifty years, from 1692 America to the mid1500s England. They had fled the witch hangings in Salem,

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Massachusetts, where Franny’s mother had been condemned to die. But now Queen Mary was burning Protestants in the very land where her family had sought refuge. Burnings, hangings, what would be next? Boiling in oil? Oh, the sixteenth-century mind was so creative in devising ways to kill people.

Then it struck Rose—Franny was truly in danger! Yet again. For Franny would no more become a Catholic than sprout wings and fly. She was a very good and observant Protestant. If you asked her what her religion was, she would say C of E. The Church of England that had been established, and headed, by King Henry VIII. But now there was this new, or rather old, church headed by the pope in Rome, and not the king or queen of England. Franny would hate that. She and her family might have to flee again.

And how bad was it in England? When Rose was last there, the young king had just died. Mary had not even been queen for a full day yet when she had ordered Rose to swear allegiance. The burnings hadn’t started, but they might begin soon—perhaps right after the coronation. Her gran’s voice rolled through her mind. Know thine enemy.

Okay, she decided. Forget the French homework. She’d finished the costume for the Snow Show—the dragon for St. George—sewing the last scales on the armature that Michael Huang would wear. Michael had taken over the role from Joe after Joe had broken his ankle. What she

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had to do now was study not French, but history—and not Indiana history, which seemed to be the single focus in school this year. She was supposed to do a report on the smallpox epidemic of 1752 that had nearly wiped out the Native American population. Oh, imagine if Queen Mary had caught smallpox! How many lives would have been saved?

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